Editorial: Fighting for minds

Muslim group's campaign against violence enters Internet

battle of ideas
Saturday, August 7, 2010 02:51 AM

The Columbus Dispatch: For many Americans, the increasing number of arrests in recent years
of would-be terrorists who were motivated by the Internet rantings of radical hatemongers are
especially frightening.

The shadowy world of self-styled prophets such as Anwar al-Awlaki, said to have influenced
several of the 9/11 hijackers and directly encouraged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, is
incomprehensible to Americans. Their power over impressionable, pious youths seems
impossible to combat.

That makes the efforts of a group of American Muslim scholars especially gratifying: Nine
preachers, of varying theological leanings, have stepped up to counter the tide of cyber-hate that
seeks to warp so many young Muslims to the point that they are not only willing, but eager, to
hurt innocent people.

The moderate leaders produced a YouTube video in which they condemn the promotion of
violence on behalf of Islam.

They're joining in a war of ideas, and they'll need to be tough.

When dealing with young ideologues who believe Islam is threatened by the West, righteous
anger and a license to kill in the name of God can be a lot more appealing than forbearance and
patience, but that's what the nine scholars are preaching.

Some of those who appear in the video have been politically controversial enough that their
views might offend some non-Muslims, but that probably is for the best. They'll have more
credibility with their target audience than imams who are part of the American civic
establishment.

Including a diverse group of Muslim thinkers is especially important. If ardent young Muslims,
searching for a way to express and defend their faith, see that clerics outside the establishment
share moderate, mainstream Muslim leaders' revulsion to violence, then the nonviolent path can
seem more promising.

Imam Suhaib Webb, an Oklahoma-born convert to Islam, appeared in the video in part because
he is troubled by the number of converts who have been accused of planning violence against
America. His assessment is right-on: "We need to shepherd our own flock and to say that,
theologically, these things are unacceptable."
U.S. needs the energy that diversity brings
Thursday, August 5, 2010 02:55 AM

The Columbus Dispatch

There are several reasons why I don't object to a mosque being built near the World Trade Center
site, but the key reason is my affection for Broadway show tunes.

A couple of weeks ago, President Barack Obama and his wife held "A Broadway Celebration: In
Performance at the White House," a concert in the East Room by some of Broadway's biggest
names, singing some of Broadway's most famous hits. Because my wife is on the board of
WETA, the public TV station that organized the evening, I got to attend, but all I could think of
was: I wish the whole country were here.

It wasn't just the great performances of Audra McDonald, Nathan Lane, Idina Menzel, Elaine
Stritch, Karen Olivo, Tonya Pinkins, Brian d'Arcy James, Marvin Hamlisch and Chad Kimball,
or the spirited gyrations of the students from the Joy of Motion Dance Center and the Duke
Ellington School of the Arts performing You Can't Stop the Beat - it was the whole big, rich
stew. African-American singers and Hispanic-American dancers belting out the words of Jewish
and Irish immigrant composers, accompanied by white musicians whose great-great-
grandparents came over on the Mayflower for all I know - all performing for America's first
black president whose middle name is Hussein.

The show was so full of life, no one could begrudge Elaine Stritch, 84, for getting a little carried
away and saying to Obama: "I'd love to get drunk with the president."

Feeling the pulsating energy of this performance was such a vivid reminder of America's most
important competitive advantage: the sheer creative energy that comes when you mix all our
diverse people and cultures together. We live in an age when the most valuable asset any
economy can have is the ability to be creative - to spark and imagine new ideas, be they
Broadway tunes, great books, iPads or new cancer drugs. And where does creativity come from?

I like the way Newsweek described it in a recent essay on creativity: "To be creative requires
divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining
those ideas into the best result)."

And where does divergent thinking come from? It comes from being exposed to divergent ideas
and cultures and people and intellectual disciplines.

As Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, once put it to
me: "One thing we know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have
mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the
other. Intuitively, you know this is true. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist, scientist and
inventor, and each specialty nourished the other. He was a great lateral thinker.
"But if you spend your whole life in one silo, you will never have either the knowledge or mental
agility to do the synthesis, connect the dots, which is usually where the next great breakthrough
is found."

Which brings me back to the Muslim community center and mosque, known as Park51. It is
proposed to be built two blocks north of where the twin towers stood and would include a prayer
space, a 500-seat performing arts center, a swimming pool and a restaurant. The New York Times
reported that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim leader behind the project, who has led
services in TriBeCa since 1983, said he wanted the center to help "bridge and heal a divide"
among Muslims and other religious groups. "We have condemned the actions of 9/11," he said.

I greatly respect the feelings of those who lost loved ones on 9/11, which was perpetrated in the
name of Islam, and who oppose this project. Personally, if I had $100 million to build a mosque
that promotes interfaith tolerance, I would not build it in Manhattan; I'd build it in Saudi Arabia
or Pakistan. That is where 9/11 came from, and those are the countries that espouse the most
puritanical version of Sunni Islam, a version that shows little tolerance not only for other
religions but for other strands of Islam, particularly Shiite, Sufi and Ahmadiyya Islam. You can
study Islam at virtually any American university, but you can't even build a one-room church in
Saudi Arabia.

That resistance to diversity, though, is not something we want to emulate, which is why I'm glad
the mosque was approved Tuesday. Countries that choke themselves off from exposure to
different cultures, faiths and ideas will never invent the next Google or a cancer cure, let alone
export a musical or body of literature that would bring enjoyment to children everywhere.

When we tell the world, "Yes, we are a country that will even tolerate a mosque near the site of
9/11," we send such a powerful message of inclusion and openness. It is shocking to other
nations. But you never know who out there is hearing that message and saying: "What a
remarkable country! I want to live in that melting pot, even if I have to build a boat from milk
cartons to get there."

As long as that happens, Silicon Valley will be Silicon Valley, Hollywood will be Hollywood,
Broadway will be Broadway, and America, if we ever get our politics and schools fixed, will be
OK.

Thomas L. Friedman writes for The New York Times.

Terrorists come from many backgrounds
Friday, August 6, 2010 02:54 AM

I respond to Chuck Smith’s observation about the power of small groups of terrorists (letter, July
27). Smith is right that it doesn’t take many terrorists to cause a problem. On 9/11, 19 Muslim
extremists representing, trained and backed by an entire movement killed nearly 3,000 innocents
of all races, colors and creeds at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on planes.

For some reason, Smith compared that to fewer than half a dozen self-styled New Black Panther
extremists who shouted absolute nonsense outside of a polling place a couple of years ago in a
black area of Philadelphia. It’s a mystery to me why, if they were trying to intimidate voters,
they didn’t do this in a heavily Republican area. But no matter. They didn’t physically harm
anyone, while they did act like idiots and spread racist hatred.

But to really find efficiency in terrorism, one has to look to the Oklahoma City bombing, where
one anti-government, white, extremist right-wing terrorist by the name of Timothy McVeigh,
with strategic support from a couple others of his ilk, killed 168 innocent people, including 19
children in a day-care center.

He also had no regard for whom he killed, but I would bet there were a much higher percentage
of white Christians at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building than there were in the World Trade
Center towers. Terrorism is terrorism, no matter what.

The laughably small number of New Black Panthers hasn’t yet committed any terrorist acts.

Odious as it is, their speech is most likely protected by the First Amendment, just as are the
hateful ramblings of the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist groups, who have the right
to hold their occasional public rally.

This is America. Love it or leave it.

ALYSSA E. HILLGER

Columbus